When Danny Dyer’s character Mick Carter told EastEnders viewers the Queen Vic’s Italian supper was “Eyetie night” he triggered a “race row”. So bad is that the Daily Star, the paper that once cheered for the EDL, is aghast.

“Danny Dyer’s character made a slur against Italians,” trills the paper on its front page. By Page 3 it’s a full-blown “race storm”. Soap fans are in a state of “fury”. For those readers not au fait with racism and not yet furious, Lauren Clarke tells us, “Eyetie is a derogatory word for Italian people which emerged during World War Two.”

The Star

The Sun agrees. Danny Dyer is “‘Eyetie’ Order”. “The “insult” is used as “offensive slang” rooted in wartime.

The Sun

Eyetie’s a bit like kraut, a slang term for Germans, which is a bit like ‘Hun’ or ‘Jerries’ – or Argie, a way of talking about Argentineans, which may or not be derogatory depending on what paper you read: